Media
Decoding your Facebook newsfeed
Plus, how one journalist is handling the challenges of reporting on the drone war in northwest Pakistan. The world's largest social media network is also one of the biggest news platforms - so allegations of a bias towards liberal news issues has triggered a lot of scrutiny, both from outside and from within. This week we unpick how Facebook delivers the news to you and why it matters. Many journalists and writers have been tracking the Facebook story and its implications. For this report, we have spoken to: Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina; Callum Borchers, media and politics reporter at The Washington Post; Will Oremus, technology reporter at Slate.com; and Kelly McBridge, media ethicist, The Poynter Institute.
Arria NLG's 9th patent covers new features of Arria's artificial intelligence products, which
The innovations protected by the new patent tie together graphs and graphical annotations with the corresponding narrative in natural language reports that the Arria NLG software generates. For example, placing one's cursor on a graphical element can cause the corresponding report section to be highlighted for ease of reference. The patented features will be deployed to strengthen the integration of language and graphical elements in the Company's products. As with the Company's other recent patents, the covered features are desirable in any NLG system, not only Arria NLG's advanced Reiter & Dale model language generation system. The new patent is part of a broad diversification plan that Arria NLG has instituted to enhance versatility and improve ease of use, as well as to increase the analytic power and actionable conclusions of its NLG products.
TechBytes: Memorial Day Weekend - IT Blog
If you're one of the 38 million American travelers this Memorial Day weekend, or enjoying one of the 800 hot dogs consumed per second during this holiday, then take a step back, relax and enjoy the week's top technology news! The question of human sustainability and sufficient resources on our planet has served as the basis for many science fiction movies. But unlike Hollywood's'Interstellar' film, our answer might be right here on Earth. AI is showing potential to completely revolutionize farming, and with it keep humanity's food supply coming. What if we could go past what we know as binary computing?
This is what music written by AI sounds like
Five days from now Google will publish open-source tools that will focus its machine-learning engine on music and art. But one London startup, named Jukedeck, has been working on getting machines to automatically generate original music for years. You can even generate your own ditty, composed by artificial intelligence, right now on Jukedeck's website. Jukedeck lets anyone use its machine-learning engine to generate tunes hosted on its website. The engine then produces an original piece of music.
Google set to explore making music with AI
Can computers be truly creative? More specifically, can people bestow upon machines what we know as creativity and have the machines thinking creatively? Google knows that an answer does not come easily and some people may argue that the answer is hairy. Do all people agree on what makes creativity creativity? Depending on what kind of definition you go by, if you build software that can take a note sequence and turn it into a melody by finding patterns where do you place it on the scale of creativity?
AI? More Like Aieeee!! For The First Time, A Robot Can Feel Pain
The danger-sensing abilities of the newly developed robot system far exceed those of the Robot in the classic TV series Lost in Space. The danger-sensing abilities of the newly developed robot system far exceed those of the Robot in the classic TV series Lost in Space. Researchers are developing a system to teach robots how to feel pain. That might seem counterintuitive, as IEEE Spectrum points out. After all, "One of the most useful things about robots is that they don't feel pain."
Artificial Intelligence programme to create algorithm art at the Tate - The i newspaper online iNews
Who needs Art critics when a computer can do the job? Visitors to the Tate will be invited to access an Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme which uses algorithms to explain the relevance of works in the collection. "We can't wait to begin working with Tate, Microsoft and a talented team of AI specialists to create this living, seeing, algorithm." Tate Britain has awarded the 15,000 IK prize and a 90,000 production budget to the Italian team behind Recognition, a research project which will merge AI and art, to "uncover the hidden links between current events and art from the Tate collection." Supported by Microsoft, the Fabrica team, based in Treviso, will use powerful algorithms and "machine learning" to search through Tate's vast digital collection and archive and news images of current events, unearthing "hidden relationships between how the world has been represented in image form, in the past and present."
Bots in the News: May 24–27, 2016 -- Bot or Not
Twice a week, we'll be highlighting the latest bot and artificial intelligence news here on the Bot or Not Medium blog. This week, we have bots running countries, companies and social engagements. Will bots eventually rule the world, like in the movies? See below for a summary, and stay tuned for more bots news next week! Real-time bots have grown exponentially smarter in the last decade.
IBM's Watson Answers the Question, "What's the Difference Between Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing?"
Prime time television viewers have undoubtedly noticed the slew of recent commercials featuring IBM's Watson computing platform in conversation with celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Carrie Fisher, Serena Williams, and Stephen King. These ads showcase continuing advances in Watson's speech capabilities and intelligence applied to various disciplines, which were initially exhibited in Watson's championship performance on the Jeopardy! The public and much of the press tend to think of such computing capabilities as "artificial intelligence" (a.k.a. AI), although that term can bring with it connotations of technology run amuck, à la HAL 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator's Skynet, and many other popular depictions. Outside the realm of fiction, technology business leader Elon Musk has tweeted that AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes," and physicist Stephen Hawking warned "development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
It's a bot, bot, bot world. Also, Apple is doomed! - The Apple Pips
Michael Gartenberg has covered the personal technology beat for more than two decades at places like Gartner, Jupiter Research and Altimeter Group. Most recently, he spent a few years at Apple as Sr. Director of Worldwide Product Marketing. I'm afraid I can't do that – HAL 900 Apple is the new Blackberry is the latest twist on "Apple is DOOMED". Apple may be missing out on Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning. Alexa, Facebooks "bots", and Google's new Assistant, clearly, there's a huge sea change that's happening, and Apple is going to be left out.